The Names Council, which no longer believes in creating the Working Groups specified in ICANN's By-Laws (perhaps since that would mean that just anyone could join in), now uses "Task Forces" which achieve a bottom-up effect by having their members chosen by ... the Names Council. Perhaps in (partial) response to the suggestion that stacking the deck this obviously left something to be desired, the Names Council decided that seven of the UDRP 'Task Force' members would be selected by the DNSO constituency groups, plus eight representatives of the four dispute services providers (who, one might think, have something of a financial interest in having more UDRP cases...). Of course, since the primary beneficiaries of the UDRP are over-represented in the constituencies, and the primary victims of the UDRP are individual domain name registrants who have no constituency that represents them, this too leaves something to be desired, but, hey, never mind, and look there is one – one! – representative of the General Assembly! Plus one each for complainants and respondents, and two independent academic experts, selected by the Names Council directly.

Looks as if ICANNWatch readers may be getting regular bulletins on this process, since I was selected as the representative of the non-commercial constituency, of which ICANNWatch.org is a member.

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I would like to make it clear that I asked to be on this task force not as an endorsement of any procedural issue associated with it or with ICANN generally. However, I have defended a number of UDRP cases, and am concerned about any changes which might have a prejudicial effect on domain name registrants. It is indeed a most perplexing observation that this task force is dedicated to a potential re-negotiation of the domain name registration contract, and there is apparently only one representative position alloted to the parties who are on the thin end of that contract. Be that as it may, I did not believe that non-participation would best serve the interests of domain name registrants.